Vowel definition for kindergarten
What are vowels and consonants?
We explain what vowels and consonants are and how primary-school children are taught to identify CVC, CCVC and CVCC words, vowel digraphs and consonant digraphs.
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What are vowels and consonants?
The alphabet is made up of 26 letters, 5 of which are vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and the rest of which are consonants.
A vowel is a sound that is made by allowing breath to flow out of the mouth, without closing any part of the mouth or throat.
A consonant is a sound that is made by blocking air from flowing out of the mouth with the teeth, tongue, lips or palate ('b' is made by putting your lips together, 'l' is made by touching your palate with your tongue).
The letter 'y' makes a consonant sound when at the beginning of a word ('yacht', 'yellow') but a vowel sound when at the end of a word ('sunny', 'baby').
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Vowels and consonants in primary school
Children learn all the letters of the alphabet in the Foundation Stage (nursery and Reception years). This means they learn to look at a letter and then make its sound, but also to hear the sound of a letter and be able to write it down.
In Reception children move onto learning to read and write CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) such as cat, top, hit, nap.
They then move on to read and write CCVC words such as trip, stop, pram.
They also learn CVCC words such as milk, lamp, tusk.
Children will also learn that sometimes two vowels are put together to make one sound, such as ai, oo, ea, ie which can be found in words such as r ain, boot, read and pie. When two vowels are put together to make one sound, this is called a vowel digraph.
They also learn that sometimes two consonants are put together to make one sound, such as th, ch and sh which can be found in words such as bath, chip and mash. When two consonants are put together to make one sound, this is called a consonant digraph.
Teachers may or may not make children aware of all the linguistic vocabulary in bold above. It is not necessarily important that they know these words or can define them: the most important thing is that they learn to read and write individual letters and words with confidence through thorough step-by-step phonics activities.
Children moving up the school may notice certain things about vowels and consonants. For example, in English we rarely have three or more vowels together; beautiful, queue, liaise, quail, quiet, squeal are some of the few words that use this spelling pattern.
Another thing children may notice is that every word in the English language contains a vowel. This is quite a useful thing to know when playing hangman: go for the vowels first!
More like this
What are CVC words, CCVC words and CVCC words?
Phonics teaching step-by-step
What is a digraph?
Recognising short vowels in CVC words (Phase 2 phonics)
What is ‘magic e’ or a split digraph?
Reading vowels (Phase 2 phonics)
Two-letter vowel sounds: /ee/ /oo/ /ur/ (Phase 3 phonics)
Joining vowels: handwriting practice activity
Using unstressed vowel words
Vowel Facts for Kids
A vowel is a particular kind of speech sound made by changing the shape of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above the tongue.
In English it is important to know that there is a difference between a vowel sound and a [letter] in the [alphabet]. In English there are five vowel letters in the alphabet.
The sounds of English are written with letters in the English alphabet, as either vowels or consonants. All English words are written with vowel letters in them.
These letters are vowels in English:
- A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y.
It is said that Y is "sometimes" a vowel, because the letter Y represents both vowel and consonant sounds. In the words cry, sky, fly, my and why, letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. In words like myth and synchronize, Y represents the vowel sound /ɪ/. In words like only, quickly, and folly, Y represents the vowel sound /i/.
It can also be a consonant sound called a glide as in the beginning of these words: yellow, yacht, yam, yesterday.
Y is a consonant about 2.5% of the time, and a vowel about 97.5% of the time.
The letter W can sometimes be the second part of a vowel sound as in words like such as cow, bow, or how. In these words the vowel has the sound of /aʊ/. The letter W can be used as a consonant sound at the beginning of in the words when, where, wet. In some languages, like Welsh, the letter W represents the vowel sound /ʊ/, like cwm (a kind of valley).
In written English the six vowel letters are used to represent the 13-15 vowel sounds (depending on the variety) in English. This means there are many more vowel sounds than letters in the English alphabet, and the English spelling systems doesn't always help us figure out what the English sounds are. This can be confusing.
- The rest of the letters of the alphabet are consonants:
- B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y (sometimes), and Z.
Monophthongs and diphthongs
Simple vowels are called monophthongs. The letters, like /ɪ/, are the IPA letters for each vowel sound in English. (The IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet). In the IPA, each symbol represents a different sound, so using the IPA is helpful in pronouncing words.
Common monophthongs in English (these are for General American English) include:
- /i/ as in police, feet, eat, and silly
- /ɪ/ as in it, sit, kick, myth and bitter
- /ɛ/ as in end, bet, less, and letter
- /æ/ as in at, apple, fat, and matter
- /u/ as in cool, tune, soup, and kung fu,
- /ʊ/ as in cook, should, pudding, foot, and rook
- /ʌ/ as in bus, blood, come, and up
- /ə/ as in kingdom, photography, philosophy, ketchup, and hundred
- /ɚ/ as in butter, collar, flavor, firm, and burst
- /ɔ/ as in all, fought, hot, and bot
- /ɑ/ as in father, walk, arm, heart, wasp, lager, envelope and aardvark
Diphthongs are a combination of two different vowel sounds, one vowel sounds turns into another sound as you say them.
If you pronounce the words below slowly, you can hear the two vowel sounds of the diphthongs.
Common diphthongs in English include:
- /eɪ/ as in ate, reign, vain, flavor, slay, and convey
- /oʊ/ as in toe, row, go, boat, mode, and chateau
- /aɪ/ as in eye, I, pie, cry, cypher, climb, lime, light, kayak, Thai, and height
- /aʊ/ as in loud, house, cow, about, Daoism, and Macau
- /oɪ/ as in boy, moist, and Freud
Like other languages, there are many dialects of English, and different dialects often use different vowel sounds.
But the IPA symbols can tell us which vowel sound a dialects uses. For example, some American English speakers differentiate between the vowels in the words cot and caught, while in other dialects these words are homophones. People who study the differences between the dialects of English often study the different way vowel sounds are pronounced.
The difference between the way English is spelled and the way the words are pronounced came about because all languages change, so spoken English changes, but the spelling system does not.
The study of speech sounds is called phonetics.
Related pages
- Orthography
- Dialect
- Diphthong
Images for kids
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Vowel Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.
Sound analysis of the word - Kindergarten "Annushka", Naryan-Mar
Consultation for parents on preparing children for literacy
Sound analysis of the word.
Hello dear parents of ! I propose to talk about preparing children for literacy training , namely, about conducting sound analysis of words .
Written speech is formed on the basis of oral speech. And the first steps to learning to read and write should not be familiar with letters, but learning the sound system of the language .
. Indeed, if a child does not pronounce the sound correctly , it is hardly worth counting on the fact that he will write it correctly in a notebook in the near future.
Pay attention to more than just correct articulation sounds, but and on the child's ability to isolate, that is, to hear sounds in the word .
This skill is developed during the systematic work of both teachers in kindergarten and parents at home in such games as: Catch sound ", "Find the position of sounds in the word " , "Find a place for the picture" etc.
Dear parents, please remember:
1. Sound is what we hear and pronounce.
2. We write and read letters.
3. Sounds are vowels and consonants.
Vowel sounds can be sung with the voice, while the air coming out of the mouth is not obstructed. Consonant sounds - sounds that cannot be sung, because. the air coming out of the mouth during their pronunciation meets a barrier.
Six vowels: A, U, O, I, E, S
Ten vowels: A, U, O, I, E, S - correspond to sounds and four iotated, which denote two sounds: Ya-ya, Yu-yu, Ye-ye, Yo-yo.
Vowel sounds are marked in red in the diagram.
Consonants are soft and hard.
Always hard consonants: Zh, Sh, Ts.
Always soft consonants: Y, Ch, Shch.
Teaching children the sound analysis of words begins with determining the sequence of sounds in the word : you need to highlight this sequence by repeatedly pronouncing words with intonational emphasis on each sound . So, when analyzing the word "BEETLE" , the child must pronounce it three times: "ZhZhuk" , "zhuuk" , "beetle" .
In order for a child to be able to analyze some phenomenon , it must be understandable, materially represented.
Let's draw a diagram of the sound composition of the word : in the word "house" three sounds - draw three cells. And let's give the child this card: a house is drawn on it, so that it is clear which word we will parse , and under the house - a diagram of this word : the child already knows that words consist of sounds .
We show him that the cells under the picture tell how many sounds are in the word . "How many cells?" - "Three". - "And how many sounds are in the word ?" - "Also three." - "Let's be these sounds look for . Say the word house so so that I hear the first sound in it. Our child already knows how - he learned at the first stage of learning . ?" - "D". - "Very good! Let's close the first cell with a chip, what will it be sound ?" - "D".
Any material can be used as chips: cut squares from white cardboard or take an old mosaic and choose white or yellow elements from it. Do not take red , blue, green - they will still be needed.0005
So, in front of the child is a diagram of the sound composition of the word "house" in which the first cell is already closed. You can move on.
"Now let's pronounce the word "house" so that we hear the second sound in it, the first d - we already know.
" Help the child for the first time, say together with him "d-o-oh" .
Here, the scheme of the sound composition of the word 9 will help us a lot0004: you need to pronounce the word and at the same time move your finger along the scheme and stop it for a long time on the second cell. We hold our finger on the second cell of the diagram, and together with the child you pull “to-oh-oh” for a long time. "What is the second sound in this word ?" - "O!" - "Great! Let's designate this sound with a chip!" The child takes exactly the same chip as the first one and puts it on the second cell.
"You see," you continue, "we already know two sounds in the word "house" . Let's find the last sound in this word . Say the word "house" so that you hear the last sound ". in the word house-m-m ?" - "M-m", - the child answers and puts the last, third chip on the diagram.
0004 .
It would be nice to repeat it again. But how? Remove chips and start over? It's not fun for a kid! No, it's better to play the game "Who is attentive." "And now, - you say, - I will call sound , and you will remove its designation from the diagram. Let's see how attentive you are. Please remove the designation of the sound" d "(blue chip)
For of this type analysis the child is offered words of three sounds : poppy, house, cheese, cat, whale, ball, beetle, onion, forest, cancer.
When studying with a child, you need to remember all the time: we teach him the sound analysis of words , we teach him to listen to the word , to hear sounds , its components. Therefore, the child must call sounds like , as they are heard in word .
This type of work with sounds is especially important for children with speech disorders.
If you see that from the child cannot cope with the sound analysis of the word , then return to games for the development of phonemic hearing.
While analyzing 3 sound words , remind the child about the presence of vowels and consonants in the language sounds . First, ask him to find the vowel in word and replace the neutral chip with a red one.
Then remember that consonants sounds are soft and hard: hard sounds are denoted by blue chips, and soft ones by green ones. Thus, now, when drawing up schemes for words , the child will use chips of three colors.
All characteristics of sounds are given ORAL (no need to write down) . If the child wants, design the model of the word in the form of an application, so that later you can show it to someone else (ask grandma or grandpa to “guess” what is this “mysterious squares” ).
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The speech therapist explains and shows that the city has a square of All Sounds, Vowel Street, Consonant Sounds Bridge, Hard Consonant Lane, Soft Consonant Lane. To get into the lanes of Hard and Soft consonants, you have to overcome an obstacle - a fence. You can go freely to the street of vowels, nothing prevents us. 
Vowels can be sung.) And what do we know about consonant sounds? (When we pronounce them, something interferes with us: either lips, or teeth, or tongue.) Close your eyes and pronounce the sound [s]: is something interfering? (Children pronounce a sound and determine that their teeth interfere, do not allow air to pass.) What kind of sound is it, a vowel or a consonant? 
But on one side of the street there are houses with bells for voiced consonants, and on the other side there are houses without bells for voiceless consonants. On which side do our sounds live? Are they voiced or deaf? 
